Taoyuan airport aims to complete 3rd runway by 2025

Taipei-- The Taoyuan International Airport Corp. has recently started an environmental impact assessment (EIA) on a third runway project, and hopes that work on the runway can be completed by 2025, the company said Thursday.

The Ministry of Transportation and Communications last year moved up the completion date of the third runway at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport from 2030 to 2025 in an effort to meet growing air transportation demands.

Therefore, the EIA process has also been activated ahead of schedule, according to the company.

The process will take about 30 months to complete, the company said.

The third runway, measuring 4,000 meters, will be on the north side of the airport and will be parallel to the airport's other two runways. It will be longer than both the 3,600-meter south runway and the 3,800-meter north runway, according to the company.

The airport's annual passenger traffic topped 40 million on Dec. 13, 2016 for the first time in the facility's 37-year history.

However, the airport's Terminal One and Terminal Two have a combined capacity of only 32 million passengers per year, prompting the company to require an additional smaller terminal before the completion of terminal expansion and construction projects to cope with a rapid increase in the number of passenger arrivals.

The company has begun a project to expand the area of Terminal Two, which is scheduled to be completed in 2020 and start operations in 2021.

Construction on building a third terminal has also started, but it is not expected to be completed until 2020.